Thoughts from the interface of science, religion, law and culture

After spending several years touring the country as a stand up comedian, Ed Brayton tired of explaining his jokes to small groups of dazed illiterates and turned to writing as the most common outlet for the voices in his head. He has appeared on the Rachel Maddow Show and the Thom Hartmann Show, and is almost certain that he is the only person ever to make fun of Chuck Norris on C-SPAN.

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Klayman on the Radio

Back when the Terri Schiavo situation was going on, I was invited to debate Larry Klayman on a radio show about it. He and Alan Keyes had met with Gov. Jeb Bush to ask him to send in the state police to prevent the machines keeping her body alive from being turned off (Bush said no). It didn’t go well for Klayman, who mostly babbled incoherently and had no idea what he was talking about (the host of the show concluded the segment by saying this was an appearance Klayman was going to want to forget). Alan Colmes recently brought Klayman on to his show and got much the same thing:

Klayman: I’m frightened for this country. I really [am.] I don’t feel that he represents the majority of Americans. I have a Jewish background, Alan, like you do and what I’ve seen in the last four years is someone who has a disdain, I believe, for Jewish people and Israel.

Colmes: Why did he have a Jewish Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel? Why does he have so many Jewish advisers? It doesn’t make any sense.

Klayman: This is a bad analogy and I’ll take it a little too far. Many times throughout history, Jewish people have been their own worst enemy. I mean, we had Karl Marx. We had people who were in and around Adolf Hitler even … The fact that these people are around him, they are just simply cover.

…

The references to rich people, the constant ‘we’ve got to pay our fair share,’ it’s kind of like we’re talking about reparations. It does lead one to think – and we should be allowed to talk about it too; you know, white people should be able to raise these issues just like black people legitimately raised them over the years in terms of racism – is I believe this guy has a tinge of racism towards whites and he wants to pay reparations. I don’t believe that he likes Jewish people … I don’t think he likes people of faith.

Colmes: What have you seen that has you so scared?

Klayman: What I have seen is, and I never thought it was even imaginable when I was fighting [Bill] Clinton, I do believe that it is possible now. I think that Obama knows that at some point a significant portion of this country is going to rise up and possibly become violent and I hope and pray that that does not happen.

Colmes: What are you basing this on?

Klayman: Well, what I’ve seen in recent weeks are black helicopters over the streets in Miami and Chicago and Houston, firing practice rounds …

Colmes: Whose helicopters are these?

Klayman: They are government helicopters that have been doing that.

Colmes: Why has this not been widely reported?

Klayman: It is starting to become widely publicized.

Colmes: Where can I get documentation of it?

Klayman: Take a look at WorldNetDaily.com.

Colmes: Oh, WoldNetDaily; you mean the people who think that he wasn’t born here?

One of the allegations about Frankenberger is that, while living in the hostel in Vienna, he caught a dose of syphilis from a Jewish male prostitute. It is widely thought that he was suffering from tertiary syphilis, along with Parkinson’s Disease during the Second World War.

I’m frightened for this country. I really [am.] I don’t feel that [President Obama] represents the majority of Americans.

One sign of idiocy is the reference to ‘feeling’ rather than ‘think’ or ‘conclude’ on these sorts of topics. Not that these idiots are getting it wrong, I’m sure their conclusions are coming from the irrational parts of their brain.

This has long been an argument by Bill O’Reilly and others. I speculatively conclude they’re telegraphing two pieces of information here. One is the telegraphing of prejudice against ‘the other’. Here I assert that’s some combination of the president is being a Democrat, not a conservative, is black, and he’s not a Christian. The president is a Christian but this set must also include premises which are assumed by the wingnut in spite of it not being true. I note the Christianity aspect cognizant of Klayman’s Jewish background, this is about Klayman creating premises which will attract a certain demographic to his argument, not the man’s own beliefs or ethnicity, Klayman is clearly a wannabe ally of U.S. Christianists.

The second conclusion is that wingnuts who use this argument have no cogent argument against their opponent. So instead they divert the topic into some other area to denigrate their opponent in a way that also rallies their tribal members. Here it’s the dog whistle of racism and anti-Christianity since those are the only two minority demographics I perceive are in play here. We should enjoy smellikng blood when people like O’Reilly and Klayman use this argument, it means they realize their losing, at least subconsciously, and can’t coherently respond while refusing to adapt in spite of their lack of an argument. The true mark of a political ideologue, unfortunately one taken on by some of the left as well.

If the elected official being discussed was in good stead with the conservative Christian tribe and their position was not reflective of the majority of Americans, Klayman’s type would be lauding the person for being a heroic leader taking the high ground in spite of the political damage that can do.

I don’t find it silly, instead I find it ironically informative. Ironic since it has the person using it denigrating the very people they’re fondly referencing.

My premise here is that faith is a character and mental defect of a mind which hasn’t emotionally matured; where this retardation is culturally derived. Not just by religion, but also by politics (I repeat myself), sports, the arts, and the media. I’ve yet to see a cogent defense of faith; calculated hope, meritorious trust, and calculated risk-taking absolutely, but faith – no.

Andrew Sullivan keeps trying to defend faith, especially in his Sunday posts, but no valid defense yet from him or those he cites. For years I read First Things in an attempt to find defendable positions on religion – that was the end of the line for me searching for intellectual honesty and fact-based premises in support of religion. Religious belief comes down to faith; where I perceive there is no valid defense of faith as a positive attribute coupled to convincing evidence it causes global suffering.

slc1: Adolf Hitler’s name, on his baptismal certificate, was Adolf Hitler. His last name was Hitler, not Schicklgruber, nor Frankenberger, nor even Frankenberry or Chocula. It makes it difficult for me to take what you say seriously when you get such basic things wrong.

vmanis1“slc1…It makes it difficult for me to take what you say seriously when you get such basic things wrong.”
Don’t worry. Once you get over that there are plenty of other things he says that make it hard to take him seriously.

They should call themselves what they are: delusional Americans. Or the reality impaired.

I think all three are effectively equivalent. Even for those people who can parse their faith from certain facts. That’s because they still avoid the facts that falsifies their faith, reveals the irrationality of their faith, and assert their faith as truth with more certainty than scientists do to a consensus understanding of certain aspects of reality.

This absolute truth perspective is a pervasive fabric of their songs, rituals, holy books, cottage media, and rhetoric; even for those believers who claim they can parse faith from facts and demonstrate doing so for a certain set of facts. Amongst their own they revert to their faith in terms of objective truth and worse – indoctrinate their kids to falsely accept the faith of their authority figures as absolute truth. It’s this latter practice which I find to be a particularly insidious and widely pervasive form of child abuse.

Olac – ‘The rumours about Adolf really being an East-end fishmonger’s wife called Hilda Ramsbotham are impossible to confirm, but they are not totally implausible either’.
Historically speaking I;d say: ‘no proof’ pretty much means ‘crackpot theory’.
But I sure SLC will regale us with his impeccable sources* to support his ‘theories’, any moment now…
Dingo
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* That Adolf Hitler (his actual name SLC, deal with it) was a thoroughly evil little shit doesn’t need embellishing with bullshit ‘internet rumours’ that he killed, raped and ate an undefined number of persons under the age 18 sometime in the 1980’s to make him look bad. ‘Gilding the lily’ I think it’s called. And I’m pretty sure your ‘source’ for all this is the 1940’s equivalent of ‘Curve Ball’. That, surely, won’t help your case.

Actually, there are fairly well sourced accusations that Frankenberger/Schickelgruber/Heidler/Hitler actually personally murdered his half-niece who he was supposedly having an affair with. He claimed to have an alibi, being elsewhere then she died but there is evidence that the alibi was phoney. Apparently, the motive for the murder was to cover up deviant sexual practices which he forced her to participate in.

Frankenberger/Schickelgruber/Heidler/Hitler’s personal physician Theodor Morell was supposedly a specialist in Syphilis, which is why there is speculation about for former being a Syphilitic. He also prescribed and administered injections of speed every morning. There is also a statement from Heinrich Himmler’s personal masseuse, Felix Kersten, that, in 1944, he was shown a physician’s workup of an unidentified man who had been diagnosed with tertiary syphilis and was informed that the man was actually Adolf.

The evidence relative to Parkinson’s disease is due to an investigation by a Philadelphia physician named Lieberman who is a specialist in that disease. He got a hold of every film clip of Adolf that he could find and discovered that, in the 1920s, Adolf would gesticulate with both hands when making a speech but that, in the 1930s, he began to gesticulate with only his right hand with the left hand hidden behind his back. After much searching, he finally found a film clip showing Adolf from behind from the late 1930s and it is evident that his left hand is trembling, a tipoff of Parkinson’s disease.

I was under the impression that the evidence was pretty conclusive that Adolf was more like a serial hetero-pedo or at least an Ephebophiliac.

After writing that sentence, look at all those weasel-words. I don’t seem to want to be held accountable for any of it because I have not done the reading myself. I could have just said I believe that Hitler was ‘really’ an Ephebophiliac – you know, because I’m working without sources and going off half remembered arguments and evidence — but I didn’t AND I really don’t want to do any reading on the guy. Hitler, not that interesting to me.

I don’t remember where I got it but: “Believing – the lowest form of knowing.”

The evidence relative to the physician’s workup was from a book about Kersten. The evidence about Parkinson’s was from a History Channel presentation which was, in fact, narrated by Dr. Liebernan. It is my recollection that the news clip showing Frankenberger’s left hand trembling is prior to the 1944 assassination attempt, as, if it been later, the trembling could have been attributed to head injuries suffered when the bomb went off.

slc1“Frankenberger/Schickelgruber/Heidler/Hitler’s personal physician Theodor Morell was supposedly a specialist in Syphilis, which is why there is speculation about for former being a Syphilitic.”
It was the early 20th century. Everybody was an specialist in syphilis.*